


Destruction Without Conscience

by AMuseForADay



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Black Canary (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arrow - Freeform, Canon Lesbian Relationship, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Hurts So Good, Sin lots of sin, Slow Burn, Their Love Is So, i need to stop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 10:46:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7888261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMuseForADay/pseuds/AMuseForADay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the life of the Black Canary. From her rebirth to the journey of love, in all of its beauty and darkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Destruction Without Conscience

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration Music: Loveless by Sinah

###    **Deѕтrυcтιon Wιтнoυт a Conѕcιence**

###  **Flightless Bird**

When I was ten years old my father brought home a canary, just for me. The song it sang annoyed everyone else. A high pitched melody that Laurel said made her ears bleed. But for me... it was love at first sight. Complete fascination with the beauty it possessed. The vivid dream it painted. Maybe it’d been a mistake all along. Or maybe the wheels of fate just have a funny way of turning. I stopped questioning a long time ago.

 

This is not a love story.

 

This is not the beginning of a hope with a happy ending.

 

This is the impossible.

 

This is the end of my life told in reverse.

 

This is a whispering of rebirth and how the Canary was given wings to fly.

 

Don’t believe. Don’t try to understand. Just listen.

 

Ollie hadn’t told Laurel as I’d feared he would,l and I hadn’t whispered a word to anyone. Deep down I wished I could have felt guilty, but when I searched my heart all I found was a smug triumph. That I’d finally gotten what I wanted all along. What I deserved. Ollie’s attention on me, his heart.. In the end the scales had been tipped once more in my favor after she’d ruined us before in her jealousy.

 

“Don’t go,” my mother had said as I packed. But I was a foolish girl in love.

 

And I had no regrets…

 

The storm seemed to rise out of nowhere. Painting the sky and sea in black as it tossed the Queen’s Gambit on precarious waters like a rag doll thrown about by a child in the height of a tantrum while thunder cracked so near it seemed as if the world shook with it, and I felt every strike of lightning through my heart. Slicing like a white hot blade through blood and muscle to puncture and destroy.

 

“It’s okay. It’ll be over before you know it,” Ollie had tried to soothe me, pulling me onto him and away from the porthole I’d been looking through.

 

I laughed despite myself, brow wrinkling with a frown, “I thought I saw something though. Are you sure it’s safe to be out here?”

 

“Probably just shadows playing tricks on you, or one of the buoys. And I promise, babe. Dad’s sailed through lots of storms. We’re just one the edge of it right now. Let’s see if we can make you feel better.”

 

I smiled against his lips as they met mine, melting against his touch, fingertips caressing the broadness of his chest through the thin fabric of his shirt as my breath caught right before the boat lurched to the left, throwing me from the bed to catapult into the wall hitting it with such force that the wind felt as if it was knocked from my lungs. The first seed of doubt, dread, began to build in my stomach. An inkling that something wasn’t as it should be. That this night was all wrong. But then there was Oliver, immediately moving to my side to help me up.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine..” my voice was breathy, released in a small laugh as I dragged fingers through my hair, eying Ollie skeptically. “Safe, huh?”

 

“Perfectly,” he reached for my hand to pull me back towards him, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as the moment seemed to freeze in time, and I looked up as I reached for his hand.

 

Too little, too late.

 

There was a loud splintering crack that seemed to reverberate through my mind before I met Oliver’s eyes, “Ollie..”

 

The word had scarcely left my lips before there was another crack muffled in the sound of the thunder and I felt the brush of his fingertips before I was ripped from the boat through the hole that had torn through it. In that moment that I was in the air, arms still reaching for the last shred of hope and life, I felt visceral fear and the wonderment of life with the knowledge of my death collide. The sound of my name from Ollie’s lips, and my own scream that was torn from my throat to be scattered along the currents of the wind, were lost in the storm as I disappeared in the oblivion of darkness. Thrown into the tumultuous malevolence of the waves so that there was barely any time to register the shock of freezing arms wrapping around my body to pull me under, submerged.

 

Falling..

 

Drowning…

 

Failing…

 

The frigid water stabbed like hundreds of thousands of tiny needles seeking the last of the warmth that could be leeched from my body, but I held on. Even while my lungs screamed, and muscles grew numb to extend to my limbs to leave them heavy like weights that only threatened to pull me farther beneath. But human body has the ability to withstand even the worst of ills in a fight of mind over matter, and I fought against the mute sound of endless silence and the viselike grip that the water seemed to have around my body, fought to swim upwards with new life breathed into my muscles.

 

The first inhalation of air, as I broke the surface to return to renewed chaos, seemed to set fire to my lungs but I accepted it gratefully because that meant I was alive. The salt of the sea burned my eyes, eyes that searched frantically for something /anything/ and found salvation on a stray piece of The Gambit that was being swallowed by the sea. And I watched as my past, present, and future sank into its own watery grave…

 

I watched as everything I was died…

                                                                ***************************************************************

Time faded as I lay upon the scrap of the boat that floated endlessly upon the tide, sun beaming relentlessly upon skin that dried and peeled. Dehydration and the gnawing beast of hunger ravaged my body. Water. Heat. Had I only survived a few extra days simply to be tortured to my death? Punishment for past sins. Never doing the right thing. Embracing selfishness. Such a silly spoiled little girl now lay dying, wilting beneath the sun’s watchful eye. In the cycle of the days, I prayed for a sign that somehow everything would be alright. Pleaded to whatever higher power there was until my throat was hoarse that I wasn’t ready...that I would do anything…That this time I wouldn’t squander it away.

 

I could barely move when I heard the first song of a canary, eyes opening to see the descent of a canary with fluttering wings to land near my fingers that were curled, having no more strength left to fight. Lips curled upwards in the barest sign of a smile as it observed me with one eye, and just beyond it I saw the looming shadow of the ship and lifted my eyes to see men staring down at me. I was barely alive when I was pulled on deck, mumbling incoherently as I was half carried, half dragged.

 

“What’s this?” I barely processed the depth of the voice that questioned the owners of the arms that supported me.

 

“Found her half dead out on the water. Boat accident maybe. She was on one of the scraps, said The Queen’s Gambit.”

 

“Did it? Were there any others?”

 

“No, Ra’s.”

 

There was lingering silence before fingertips lifted my chin and blurred vision barely processed the man that stood before me, the presence that seemed encompassing before I was transferred to his arms. Strong arms that cradled a bent and broken body as if I were a child. There was a distinct smell like the pines in winter when my father used to take me camping. A smell that calmed me as much as it confused me.

“Well, what are we to do with you?

 

I had no answer for him, and it seemed like he hadn’t expected one as he carried me to a room where he laid me down on a bed and my eyes rolled back as relief flooded my body and I gave up the fight.

  
If only I had known the fight had only just begun.


End file.
